More details emerged after Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s partner and father of her daughter was found dead by police on October 1 in a Louisiana home.
The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office first released a statement to NBC News on October 1 confirming that Ken Urker was found dead by deputies at a residence in Raceland, Louisiana. He was 34 years old.
A preliminary report obtained by NBC News from the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office on Oct. 2 characterizes the incident as “drug-related” and the incident code is listed as “overdose.” Police said they found no signs of foul play.
According to the report, Blanchard’s half-brother, Dylan Blanchard, and another person, Justin Daigle, told police they gained access to Urker’s unlocked bedroom window and entered the home after seeing Urker unconscious on his bed. Daigle told police that Urker “wasn’t breathing.”
Authorities were initially called by Anita Blanchard, who said she and the two other men were trying to gain access to Urker’s home because he had not answered his phone or his front door, according to the report.
Anita Blanchard, Dylan Blanchard and Daigle told deputies when they arrived at the residence that Urker was dead, according to the report. Officers entered the home and found syringes and a spoon in the bathroom alongside “a brown powdery substance,” according to the report. They also found a syringe and a handgun on the nightstand next to the bed.
Urker had a paper towel placed on his left arm “with what appeared to be blood stains,” according to the report.
Anita Blanchard and Dylan Blanchard told police that Urker made comments to them that they were “depressed and upset” while they were with them at church on Sept. 30, according to the report.
Lafourche Parish Coroner Kayla Breaux said in a statement to NBC News that an autopsy was performed Oct. 2 and “there is no definitive cause of death” at this time.
“The case remains pending completion of toxicology testing, and no further information regarding the cause of death will be available until those results are received and the investigation is completed,” Breaux said in the release.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard told People magazine in an interview published October 2 that Urker died of an overdose. TODAY reached out to Blanchard as well as A+E Global Media, which owns Lifetime, the network that airs Blanchard’s reality show, “Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup,” but did not immediately receive responses.
Blanchard and Urker first met while Blanchard was still in prison for his role in the murder of his allegedly abusive mother in 2015. The two got engaged in 2018 before breaking up a year later. Blanchard was released from prison in 2023 after serving more than eight years of her 10-year sentence.
She and Urker finally rekindled in 2024 and welcomed a daughter. While speaking to People on October 2, Blanchard called Urker her soulmate.
“Ken was an extraordinary father and a deeply loved man,” she said. “He will forever be my soul mate and my common thread, a bond that time, distance and even death can never erase.”
Around the time she and Urker separated, Blanchard married another man, Ryan Scott Anderson, in 2022. They separated in 2024 and finalized their divorce in December of that year.
Blanchard and Urker reconnected and announced in July 2024 that they were expecting a child together. They welcomed a baby girl, Aurora, on December 28, 2024, just weeks after she finalized her divorce from Anderson.
“Honestly, we didn’t have a plan,” Blanchard told TODAY.com in March 2025. “It was really one of those things that we prepare for. So whenever it comes to scrutiny, we stick with each other. We lean on each other for support. One has to be the strongest, and then the other has a moment of rest and weakness to let it all sink in.”
Urker first met Blanchard in 2017, when he wrote her a letter while she was being held in a Missouri state prison. He had learned about her story while watching “Mommy Dead and Dearest,” a 2017 HBO documentary about the murder of Blanchard’s mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, as well as the abuse Blanchard suffered throughout her childhood.
Blanchard is believed to be a victim of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a psychological disorder in which “a caregiver feigns, exaggerates or induces illness in (another person) for the primary purpose of gaining attention, sympathy and praise,” Dr. Marc Feldman, a board-certified psychiatrist, said in a previous interview with TODAY.com.
Nicholas Godejohn, Blanchard’s ex-boyfriend who committed her mother’s murder, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after initially pleading not guilty.
Blanchard was still in prison when Urker proposed to her in 2018. In August 2019, they broke up.
“There were many adults in his life, probably much ‘wiser’ than him, who suggested that it was not the right time for me to get married,” Blanchard explained in his 2024 memoir, “My Time to Stand.” “‘If you love her, you will set her free,’ was the common advice he heard again and again, sometimes from prominent Hollywood therapists and other media figures, sometimes from members of my own immediate family. I see now that he believed he was acting in my best interests by sacrificing his own needs and desires.”
Urker shared on Instagram in 2024 that the couple had gotten back together after Blanchard split from Anderson in 2022. The two then welcomed their daughter together later that year.
“My marriage to Ryan taught me a lot about myself,” Blanchard told TODAY.com. “There’s something Ryan said in Season 1 (of “Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up”): ‘Life is not a fairy tale. It’s going to have its challenges.’ I didn’t understand that at the time. Now, after going through it all, I apply that to my relationship with Ken. We will have bad days, times when we feel overwhelmed, but we must not give up. Don’t judge the entire relationship on this one day or this one argument.
Gn entert
